


sense8 au [outline]

by vomara



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Friendship, Gen, Identity Reveal, Psychic Bond, almost episode by episode, but it's a very thorough outline, this is an OUTLINE not a story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:40:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26101300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vomara/pseuds/vomara
Summary: An ATLA Sense8 AU outline that goes through the entirety of canon, integrating Sense8 elements. For those of you unfamiliar to Sense8, it's a TV show about eight people all over the world who wake up psychically connected.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33





	sense8 au [outline]

**Author's Note:**

> aspects of the sense8 lore has been modified to fit ATLA, and for people who aren’t fans of the show, i try to be clear, but if it’s still confusing, [here’s a link to the wiki page that details how the sensate thing works.](https://sense8.fandom.com/wiki/Sensate)
> 
> i posted this originally to tumblr a couple weeks back. it's all in lowercase as a result, sorry.

  * no one in the gaang knows they’re a sensate, not even when the avatar awakens from his 100 year slumber.
  * so when exactly is their cluster “born”? (aka for non-fans, when do they suddenly gain their psychic connections to the people within their group/“cluster”?) it happens at roku’s temple, during the winter solstice. roku himself “births” their cluster, and tells aang briefly about what he just did. aang understands – because sensates were common knowledge amongst air nomads.
  * aang, katara, and sokka escape one way and zuko escapes another, and for the next week, they start… feeling odd. soon, roku starts to visit them and they start having sudden migraines. one day, sokka’s out hunting when aang suddenly “visits” him, sees the ferret-hare sokka’s about to kill, and stops sokka from killing it. somehow, instead of being stupefied by their newfound ability, sokka just chews aang out for letting his next meal get away. they discuss what aang knows about the sensate ability over the fire. one of the abilities, beyond “visiting”, is “sharing”, where they can share skills with each other. katara tries to take advantage of this during “the waterbending scroll”.
  * zuko has a dream with roku and afterwards, starts getting migraines, but for the most part, he doesn’t feel the connection. why? iroh knew that zuko was an unawakened sensate from a young age, and thus kept blockers (sourced from the OotWL) on hand in case zuko woke up. normally, iroh would want zuko to embrace his nature, but iroh also realizes that there’s danger in being a sensate, especially in the fire nation. most information of sensates has been suppressed there over the years, and zuko could be headhunted if found out. (and… there’s another reason as to why iroh gives zuko blockers, but more on that later.)
  * toph is also within the cluster, but nobody actually knows that for some time. aang, katara, and sokka have their suspicions that someone else is in the cluster, but they can’t discern whom. this is because toph’s blindness has an odd effect through her connection. while sensates would usually be able to identify each other by seeing each other’s physical appearance when they “visit” through their bond, toph has no conception of her own appearance, and as such, she initially can’t seem to project herself visually the way that everyone else does. since sighted people – aang, katara, sokka – rely heavily on physicality to identify others, this hampers them.
  * it doesn’t help that bending is complicated by the cluster connection. toph can’t use her bending to “see” aang, katara, and sokka when they visit her via psychic connection, because they aren’t physically there. likewise, they don’t receive any visual input, either, when they visit toph. instead, they receive this odd earth-sense feeling that’s absolutely foreign and indecipherable to them. when toph visits them, she has to leave almost immediately – her occipital lobe is severely underdeveloped and thus, she can’t interpret the visual information they give her. with time, they should be able to resolve this, but not immediately after they made the connection. all of this this is a significant barrier between their communication – they can speak, but early on, toph, understandably, begins to think that the other three don’t actually exist and manages to effectively block them out. this prevents them from realizing the connection they have until s2. (more on bending later.)
  * the “medication” (blockers) that uncle gave zuko becomes a normal supplement he takes, in the form of tea. he thinks it’s to stave off migraines. still, sometimes he goes a little too long between doses, and sees some peculiar things. when he’s sleeping, his dreams get odd. one night, he dreams of escaping into a storm. he shakes it off, and when his ship gets trapped in another storm, he takes it as an omen.
  * aang, likewise, has a dream the night after being rescued by the blue spirit. a man looming over him, nothing more than a sillouette, fire in his hand. _“… and suffering will be your teacher,”_ he hears.
  * when sokka looks into yue’s eyes, euphoria runs though him. he thinks it’s love, but it’s something more. yue is an unawakened sensate, and while it’s rare for unawakened sensates to make connections with other sensates, it does happen, and in this case, she’s made a connection with sokka. (for non-fans: sensates can make psychic connections with people outside their cluster by meeting each other’s eyes. they must be physically in the same space when they meet eyes, though. connections made outside of the cluster cannot share skills, but they can “visit” each other.)
  * (yes, this means toph is immune to creating connections outside her own cluster. this is both a boon and a loss – she can’t have unique connections, but that also means that _malicious_ sensates can’t force a connection with her.)
  * pakku fesses up to the fact that kanna left him, and that she probably left him due to his misogynistic attitude. however, a lot more people have left the NWT in the last 100 years, that weren’t all related to cultural problems. many sensates, when they were “born”, suddenly had the perspectives of people who lived in other nations, and many left to join the rest of their clusters. this is something that katara discovers from yugoda.
  * after zuko’s ship is blown up, his supply of “medication” becomes even less regular. when zuko infiltrates the NWT, his medication is wearing off, and a migraine is coming on. he pushes through it. when he and katara fight, they meet eyes, and something electric runs through both of them. they ignore this, but it happens again between aang and zuko, when zuko’s medication is wearing off even more. none of them know what’s happened, but aang remembers the experience later.
  * when yue sacrifices herself, sokka quite literally feels her apotheosis. later, he realizes that he can still feel her. katara feels the cycles of the moon because she’s a waterbender, sokka feels it because he and yue are connected.
  * the foggy swamp shows aang toph’s appearance… and things slowly start to change within their cluster. during “the blind bandit”, aang recognizes toph to be his future earthbending master immediately, but so too does katara and sokka, who, in canon, did not make the immediate connection. when they chase her down, they finally manage to make toph understand that she’s part of a psychic cluster, that those voices she heard before were real.
  * during “zuko alone”/“the chase”, katara sees something she shouldn’t see. there’s a man standing over someone else, with his back to her, twin swords in both hands, wreathed in flame. she can’t see his face but he feels familiar.
  * in “the chase” itself, aang also sees zuko, this time fully recognizing him, and then so too does sokka. since toph and zuko both are somewhat closed off, they can’t sense each other – but aang, katara, and sokka, who don’t know this, thus incorrectly believe that toph doesn’t have a connection to zuko at all. therefore, they come to the conclusion that zuko is a sensate, but that he’s not a part of their cluster. they must’ve created accidentally met his eyes and made a connection with him back when he was chasing them. though sokka has to wonder why zuko didn’t just use his connection to better track them down, like he’s somewhat doing now, during “the chase”.
  * after zuko reunites with iroh, he’s shaken by the odd visions he had of the gaang while traveling. he doesn’t understand that he’s psychically connected to them, so they felt more like premonitions. he tells iroh a little of what he saw, and iroh nearly startles in alarm as he realizes that zuko’s cluster is the avatar’s group. but given the fact that zuko is reeling from both the fight with azula and iroh’s injury, iroh decides to keep it to himself. when zuko asks if iroh has any more of the migraine “medication”, iroh gives it to him – _only for now_ , he thinks. he doesn't want to keep this from zuko, but the outright truth might be completely unacceptable. (not to mention, there are other dangers.)
  * in “bitter work”, toph takes advantage of the psychic connection to teach aang earthbending. katara had done this before, a little, but not much, because aang never really needed it. for earthbending though? it’s useful. toph gets aang to “visit” her, and forces him to stay. when he’s visiting her, he only gets her sensory input, and thus, he’s blind. he has to spend time with her and learn to decipher the information that toph’s earth-sense gives her. this helps him understand his own earth-sense.
  * also, just for fun, before sokka gets stuck in a hole in that episode, he accidentally visits katara while she’s practicing bending. he asks her what it feels like. she lets him take a ride in her body and _shows_ him how it feels.
  * and that’s really how bending works in conjunction with the psychic connection – bending is partially based in body, so when a sensate briefly possesses another sensate’s body, they can bend whatever element is in that body. but that’s also contingent on their own spiritual connection to the element. in sokka’s case, his peculiar attachment to the moon (yue) makes him not-the-worst at waterbending when in katara’s body. when katara and sokka “visit” toph, the information they get from her earth-sense is not as precise as the info that aang gets, because they have less connection with the earth. so on and so forth. yes, when someone “visits” aang’s body, they can bend all four elements. this particular property of possession only works well within clusters, as it’s part of the skillsharing aspect which is unique to clusters.
  * there are other effects on bending, too. when iroh begins to teach zuko lightning direction, he first begins by teaching zuko the basics of movement in waterbending. zuko picks up the push-and-pull fluidity of the style almost immediately. why? because some of katara’s and aang’s expertise has trickled down to him, sometime when his connection wasn’t blocked. (during the siege of the north, specifically.)
  * when aang loses it after appa is kidnapped, everyone in the connection can feel his anger. they can feel the avatar state, almost as they were there themselves, shrouded in anger and grief. and katara drags him down to earth once again, but sokka and toph run forwards to meet him, and together, they hold him in their presence and provide him comfort and support through their connection. somewhere else, zuko begins to cry, and he doesn’t quite know why.
  * for most of the rest of the season, zuko takes blockers regularly, and his connection to the gaang is blocked. the exception is when he falls ill after setting appa free. an illness that deep is semi-resistant to the blockers, and odd memories weave their way into his dreams – an air nomad laughing with him (aang), black snow falling from the sky (sokka), his mother’s face superimposed over another’s (katara), the feeling of badgermole snout against his cheek (toph), and the feeling of being buried alive in lava (roku, their cluster “mother” who passed some memories down to them). all of this is in a blur that mixes with the rest of his absurd and symbolic dream, and he can’t quite separate them out when he awakens.
  * in “the guru”, when aang ascends the last chakra and sees the cosmic energy around him, he can see the visage of the rest of the cluster there, glowing sillouettes akin to his avatar state. they’re tethered to him, but guru pathik tells him to let go of his connections. he has to be willing to keep moving even without them, even if they died… but he can’t. he’s fallen in love with their connection – katara, sokka, toph, and the odd flickering image of someone else on the horizon. and suddenly, he can feel katara in danger, viscerally so, and he has to leave.
  * during “the crossroads of destiny”, tension comes to a head. when katara talks to zuko, she references the fact that zuko made a sensate psychic connection to her, aang, and sokka, while he was hunting them. (remember, she doesn’t know he’s part of the cluster, but thinks he’s a sensate from another cluster that managed to connect with them through eye contact.) this confuses him, but he doesn’t quite get the clarification he needs before iroh and aang come in, and both aang and katara leave. when azula traps iroh, and leaves zuko and iroh alone, iroh finally reveals to zuko the extent of what he is, including the fact that the rest of his cluster, the rest of his psychic family, is the avatar and his friends. from this, zuko also discerns that the medication wasn’t actually medication, and feels angry at iroh, which in part leads to his betrayal.
  * _“if you go down this path, i can no longer protect you, nephew,” iroh says, as zuko leaves to fight azula._
  * the lightning strike is a terrifying moment, and it reverberates throughout the sensate bond. katara almost collapses but manages to get aang to safety. toph and sokka are struck with fear and pain. and zuko… feels a twinge in his chest, something that penetrates even through his blockers. he barely manages to hide it.
  * in “the awakening”, aang tries to close himself off to his cluster, and he hides from them. out in the ocean, he sees yue, and roku, and suddenly he sees them in a deeper fashion, feels the sensate energy between them. katara, sokka, and toph track him to the island with their connection.
  * at the start of s3, zuko goes home. his usual supply of blockers is running low, since he got them from his uncle, and he’s just run out. now, zuko meets his father again for the first time in years. when he looks up into ozai’s eyes, all the muscles in his body are too warm, too cold. and ozai narrows his eyes, and smiles. _why, he didn’t know his son was a sensate, too._
  * they both recognize what just occurred, and ozai tells him that he’ll leave zuko a supply of blockers to take regularly. the crown prince has just returned home in honor. it would be horrible if they’d have to send him away once again, on another _hunt._
  * you see, ozai first awakened when he was in his late twenties, before he married ursa. sensates are forbidden knowledge in the fire nation, but azulon suspected that there would be sensates in his family one day. but since being a sensate gives you an unfortunate connection to people that may not be fire nation, it’s not something that either azulon or ozai was happy about. so ozai vowed to prove his loyalty by hunting and killing his clustermates. this is a painful and terrifying process. killing a clustermate is like a killing a part of yourself. and ozai did this several times. he even killed another fire nation woman that was part of his cluster; he surmised that her temporary connection to those of earth and water would make her traitorous, and justified it that way. now, all of ozai’s clustermates are dead, but he still retains his abilities as a sensate to connect to other sensates.
  * _(when zuko was very young, zuko once one-sidedly connected to ozai, gaining a terrifying, context-less memory of ozai's hunt. he told this to iroh, which made iroh realize what zuko was. iroh kept zuko safe for so long as a result.)_
  * zuko is… happy that his father seems to respect him, but he feels uneasy. the unease remains as azula delivers to him the blockers, like she knows exactly what he is, too. and the way that she acts as if he knows the avatar is alive, does she suspect that the avatar is part of his cluster? did she see him react to his so-called death in a way that indicated a psychic connection? he doesn’t know, and he feels so very uneasy and destabilized.
  * during “sokka’s master”, sokka’s more skilled at swordplay than he should be. he chalks it off to natural talent, but there was a weird, long moment where he almost selected the dual dao as his weapon of choice. later, when he’s planning the invasion with the water tribe, hakoda notes that sokka’s handwriting has become neater and more formalized, closer to the sharp script of the fire nation nobility. sokka thinks that it’s from being in the fire nation for too long.
  * in “the avatar and the fire lord”, aang and zuko both find out that roku and sozin were part of the same cluster. through this, aang realizes that avatars of the past have had clusters of their own, ones that they kept a secret but nevertheless had. roku and sozin are also shown to have outlived the rest of their cluster, but sozin killed roku and became the last one standing. from that act, zuko realizes the history that runs through the blood of fire royalty – the sin of killing one’s own spiritual brothers, fratricide of the highest order. it’s a curse that even ozai followed through on, and it’s one that zuko will eventually be damned to if he cannot rise above it – this is what iroh tells him as zuko kneels in front of his cell.
  * when zuko escapes the fire nation on the day of black sun, he takes a supply of blockers with him. after all, if he doesn’t block his own sensate ability, his father will be able to track him using the connection they made with each other. when he confronts the gaang in the western air temple, he doesn’t get the chance to explain that he’s part of their cluster, but alarm bells go off toph’s head. he leaves to go back to his camp, and she follows because she NEEDS to verify this hunch. he burns her, but when she finally gets back to the gaang, she knows for sure that she recognizes that voice – he’s the odd voice she heard once back during the chase, sleep deprived. he’s psychically connected to her.
  * the puzzle pieces fall together in the gaang’s mind. zuko had already established connections with the other three, so they assumed before that their connection to him was a product of them meeting eyes with him during his initial hunt. but toph cannot make connections with people outside of her cluster, due to her blindness, so she can’t possibly have a connection with zuko… unless he’s a part of their cluster. it’s a terrifying conclusion, and not one that everyone wants to accept. behind toph, aang is probably the one who most wants to accept zuko – it’s unnatural to reject a clustermate, that he knows from what the monks told him.
  * zuko takes his blockers diligently, so that his father can’t find him through the connection. but, by the time he and aang meet the dragons, it’s worn off, just a little. not enough that ozai can find him, but enough that he and aang can share in the rainbow fire together, their inner fires vibrating at the same beautiful intensity. this connection is one they alone share – even when katara, sokka, or toph try to bend fire in either of their bodies, they can’t capture the real spirit behind the fire.
  * sokka takes a few blockers with zuko before they go to the boiling rock, but the rest of the small supply that they take with them to the boiling rock is burned away with the rest of the warship. as a result, it’s a race against time for them to get hakoda and get out, as their medication wears away. for sokka, he’s practically waiting for the blockers to wear off, so he can SOS aang, katara, and toph, but for zuko, once the blockers wear off, his father can find him once again. in this case, it’s actually a good thing that he gets outed as an impostor and imprisoned because then, at least, anybody who comes after him aren’t coming after him because they tracked him through the bond.
  * however, when azula finds the gaang at the western air temple, it IS because ozai told her they’d be there. that’s because zuko’s blockers wore off before he could arrive at the temple and take another from the rest of his supply. everyone’s back to being sort of safe during their stay at ember island.
  * when aang gets stranded on the lionturtle, the lionturtle shows him not only energybending, but the very psychic nervous system that connects him to his clustermates. it’s almost like the roots of the foggy swamp tree, this great psychic energy that connects everyone and everything but is strongest between the sensates. they are all connected, but their sensate connections are an incredible and unusual manifestation of this energy.
  * aang takes away ozai’s sensate abilities alongside his bending, so he can no longer abuse them. if energybending is a sort of “neutralization” of ozai’s bending ability, the removal of his sensate ability is a sort of “severance”. it severs ozai from that great psychic energy that connects everyone and everything, and in some sense, that’s a fate worse than death. that’s as if the world rejected you and judged you unworthy of the connections that living creatures make. aang doesn’t regret doing what he did to ozai, but he opts never to do it again.
  * after the war, zuko finally stops taking blockers. he’s free to truly connect with the rest of the gaang. toph embraces her connection as well, and one day, she manages to actually see, using sokka’s eyes first, and then one by one, every one else. furthermore, the rest of the gaang finally begin to understand how she “sees”, and as a result, they all become more comfortable visiting each other.




End file.
